The voice of Gevey verbs

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The concept of voice in Gevey has little to do with grammatical necessity, but rather social and dialectal mores. Nevertheless, it is essential to get the voice of each clause's verb correct.

Three voices are used in Gevey: active, incidental and stative. While the use of the stative voice can seem idiosyncratic (and indeed varies between geographical regions and even peer groups), the use of the active and incidental voices is rather simpler, once the concept of subject causation is understood

Subject causation

Gevey is, in many ways, a very precise language - with the precision being coded into the grammar of the language. A good example of this is subject causation.

The subject of a clause (for more information on subjects, direct objects and indirect objects, refer to the noun section of this grammar) directs the action of the principal verb when the clause is using interactive mode. In Gevey, a distinction is made between actions that are willfully instigated by a subject, and those that are the result of a previous action.

The effect of this distinction is that Gevey divides the world of objects (remember, a subject is just an object that is directing the action of a verb) into two groups:

It is important to understand that the distinction is whether an object could instigate an action, not whether it is instigating an action in this particular situation. In fact the division between causative and applicative objects is very simple - an object will be applicative unless it is:

in which case, the object will be causative.

Applicative subjects are restricted to just two voices: the stative voice and the incidental voice. Applicative subjects are incapable of instigating actions of their own volition (there will always be a causative subject at the start of any chain of events: a stone rolls down a hill because it is kicked by a goat, the goat accidently dislodged the stone, or perhaps deliberately kicked it, who knows the purposes of a goat), so an applicative subject's principal verb will never take the active voice.

Causative subjects will also react to previous actions, and may not actively instigate their action. However, a causative subject's principal verb will normally take the active voice. When a causative subject uses a principal verb in the incidental voice, it is because the speaker or writer wants to highlight the accidental or non-intentional nature of the action in the clause.

Note that all inanimate objects are also applicative objects. However, not all internal, external or simple objects are causative objects. The test which is used to divide the two groups is the ability of the object to instigate action.

Demonstrating the voice of the principal verb

A Gevey principal verb can be either a simple construction (just the action verb itself, properly conjugated), or it can be a compound construction (an auxiliary verb which is conjugated, followed by the correct action verb participle).

The voice of a Gevey verb is demonstrated by the verb's construction:

Stative voice compound construction, using the auxiliary verb 'ben', to have
Incidental voice compound construction, using the auxiliary verb 'sen', to be
Active voice simple construction

The simplest way of demonstrating the use of voice is through some examples. The following examples show the differing use of the active and incidental voice:

Use of the stative voice may seem to be a minefield for the uninitiated. Indeed, the tasks performed by the stative voice can often vary depending on the origin of the speaker, or even their social group or age. Uncontroversial (and relatively stable) uses of the stative voice include:

Some examples of using the stative voice:

There is no passive voice in Gevey

Many languages, including Ramajal, use a voice called the passive voice to indicate situations where the subject of the clause is receiving the action of the verb, rather than directing the action. There is no such thing as a passive voice in Gevey. There are no circumstances in which the subject of a clause can receive an action of a verb, except when that subject is carrying out the action on itself (in which case a reflexive personal pronoun will be used as the direct object of the clause)

The most common use of the passive voice in Ramajal is to give prominence to the object receiving the action of the verb by making it the subject of the clause and casting the verb into the passive voice. Gevey uses focus to achieve a similar effect:

While this system works when both subject and direct object are "new information" (and thus occur before the verb), it is a less successful strategy when new information (the comment) is mixed with old information (the topic, which generally follows the verb).

Most old information in Gevey is supplied in the form of pronouns placed at the end of the clause. When more than one pronoun is present, then the final pronoun is said to be in weak focus. Weak focus can also be switched on by raising the intonation on the final word. More information on the concept of focus can be found on the Gevey focus webpage.

Weak focus is (as its name implies) weaker than primary and active focus. Thus logically a direct object in primary focus carries more emphasis that a pronoun in weak focus. So, the following clause would appear to be a passive construction:

Gevey speakers overcome this problem by bringing into play a hierarchy of animacy for subject pronouns in weak focus.

Now, when a Gevey speaker wants to shift the emphasis of the clause away from the subject towards the direct object, all they have to do is emphasise the direct object using the focus promoter mark.

This page was last updated on Tecufintuu-26, 530: Jafcuu-89 Gevile